The Energon Pub

No more brown plastic!

My Age of Extinction Deluxe Lockdown was in dire need of paint. Whoever picked the plastic material colour for this figure needs to give their head a shake. His original plastic colour was atrocious, as seen here in the obligatory before-and-after comparison shot in robot mode:

And in vehicle mode:


Sooooooo much better.

Used these pics of Lockdown as a basic guideline for the paint job:



Also made a simple mod to the legs that I learned about from this guy’s incredible custom Deluxe Lockdown:
http://ashford0394.pixnet.net/blog/post/107594647

The simple mod uses the shoulders from a Fall of Cybertron Deluxe Skywarp figure as new knees to give him some much needed height. As you can see from the comparison shot above, the difference is amazing. You gotta pop them out for transformation, but considering how much better he looks in bot mode, it’s a very minor inconvenience to gain a major improvement in appearance.

Shot of the legs:

More pics of the finished product:





I added a small amount of dry-brushing on his face to give him the ‘grungy’ look he had in the film, and green eye highlights.

Here you can see just how he stacks up against other figures from Age of Extinction with his new knees installed:

And, closing out with a quick action shot:

Hope you enjoyed the pics! I’m much happier with this guy sitting on my shelf now. Definitely a vast improvement in my eyes!

Cool! Could you explain how to do the leg mod? I'm intrigued.

Moosey wrote:Cool! Could you explain how to do the leg mod? I'm intrigued.

For sure! It's really easy. And again, I give credit to this guy for doing it first: http://ashford0394.pixnet.net/blog/post/107594647

Step one is you need to find a cheap FoC Seeker mold, and steal the shoulders off it. Skywarp is who I used, but since I painted it, Starscream or Thundercracker would have worked just as well.



Next, I had to trim just a bit off the fins that stick off to help with clearance on the joint.. I used a sharp xacto blade. Here's an illustration of where I cut. I did a bit at a time until I got the right amount.



Last, i had to trim a bit off of the posts that connect the limb pieces together, because they're a slightly different size. Here's an example of what I had to do to make sure they slid in to the joints on Lockdown's leg pieces:



Again, I trimmed a bit at a time until they fit snugly.

That's all that you need to do to give Lockdown an extra piece of leg height.

First of all! So far best customization ive seen for legs and love the black i hate the stupid brown it came with. Can you explain how you painted it if its not too much to ask. Im not good at customizing so i have no idea how i should paint a figure or what to use. For examlle i want to change my lockdown to a black like this just like my human alliance dotm soundwave it came in that crapy gray plastic and i want to change it to like a silver.

Cycl0ne wrote:First of all! So far best customization ive seen for legs and love the black i hate the stupid brown it came with. Can you explain how you painted it if its not too much to ask. Im not good at customizing so i have no idea how i should paint a figure or what to use. For examlle i want to change my lockdown to a black like this just like my human alliance dotm soundwave it came in that crapy gray plastic and i want to change it to like a silver.

Thanks! I appreciate the feedback!

The paint job was actually quite simple on this guy. First thing I did was disconnect all his limbs. This also allowed me to remove his back window so I wouldn't need to mask it. Unfortunately, his windshield and small side windows are pinned in, so I had to mask them with green painters tape. I was really careful with this to make sure I got 100% of the windows covered.

I sprayed him all over with Tamiya gunmetal spray paint, and finished with a spray coat of Testors dullcoat clear to give him the matte finish.

Then I hand-painted the accents like his face, orange on his arms and legs, silver and matte black bits (hard to see, but they are there), blue headlights, red taillights, and yellow/silver on his leg spring details. For all my hand-painting I use bottled Tamiya acrylic model paints.

Capped it all off with some dark metallic grey drybrushing on his face. That's it!

Oh alright. Thank you very much! And again you did an amazing job!!!